Despairful
August 27, 2007
Filed in: The Way We Live Now
Did you read the front-page story in the Times yesterday about the pollution in China? Yeah, me neither. I couldn’t bear it. I read the hed and decks and picture captions, and then squinted here and there at a paragraph or two. But it’s really too awful a story to swallow all at once. Or maybe...
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Thank You Joanne
August 26, 2007
Filed in: The Home Front, The Way We Live Now
In November of 1999, a FedEx truck pulled up to our old house in Beverly and delivered a late birthday present to C, who had just turned 6. I stashed it away, mistakenly thinking it was an early Christmas present.
But late one afternoon--as we were playing in our dark, skanky basement where W,...
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North Dakota, Land of Misperception
August 10, 2007
Filed in: North Dakota
So, North Dakotans! Are you weary of people referring to Mt. Rushmore as being in your state, when it fact it’s not?
Weary of people who say, “Well, what about the Badlands,” clearly meaning Badlands National Park, which also is in South Dakota?
(There are badlands in North Dakota, they’re...
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Landscapes So, So Familiar
August 05, 2007
Filed in: The Home Front
Just back from finally seeing Edward Hopper at the MFA. Stunning, brilliant, color-soaked, flat. I love Hopper. My mom loves Hopper. She has two Hopper prints hanging in her otherwise un-art-heavy house, including the one (as she reminded us at lunch after the exhibit) she cut out of a magazine...
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How It Will All End
July 30, 2007
Filed in: Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, North Dakota
So here’s the plan: Kansas. Alaska. Hawaii. The extreme ends and the smack middle of these our United States.
(Somewhere a little northwest of Lebanon, KS is the geographic center of the lower 48 states. The geographic center of all 50 United States is outside of Castle Rock, SD but I’ve...
